From historical omens of doom to Hollywood blockbusters about saving the world, comets and asteroids

loom large in fiction and folklore. And there’s a good reason: One of the chunky rocks or balls of ice
could eventually slam into Earth and change the planet irreversibly. Such an impact 66 million years ago
is widely believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. Asteroids and comets formed some 4.6 billion years
ago after a giant cloud of gas and dust collapsed and condensed to create the sun. The leftover debris
orbiting the sun coalesced into planets, moons, and other objects. Asteroids and comets are the
remnants of this process. Here’s what you need to know about how they differ, where they come from,
and whether they pose a serious threat to Earth.

What are asteroids and the asteroid belt? Asteroids are essentially chunks of rock that measure in size
from a few feet to hundreds of miles in diameter. NASA has identified more than a million asteroids, and
more than 150 of them have their own moons. In 2022, astronomers published evidence that the
asteroid Elektra has as many as three chunks of rock orbiting it—making it the first known quadruple
asteroid.

For many years, astronomers considered Ceres to be the largest asteroid at about 590 miles wide. In
2006, however, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet—making Vesta
the largest asteroid at 329 miles wide. Yet this remains a point of contention among some astronomers,
and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature defines Ceres as both an asteroid
and a dwarf planet.